“FlashForward” mini-cap: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

After last week’s episode filled with the escaped terrorist Alda Hertzog assassinating Dyson Frost and Demetri not dying, can we please get back to Janis here? Well, it appears we do just that.

We get to take a special trip down Janis’s memory lane in which we learn that she was first a miserable lawyer but joined the Bureau when good friend Demetri did. She’s kicking ass with the other Quantico graduates on the six-mile killer obstacle course, Yellow Brick Road. She’d never thought of herself as patriotic, but it sounded cool try to make the world a safer place.

Two years before the blackout, Lita, a beautiful head hunter with lots of cleavage, is wining and dining Janis while explaining the “opportunities” she can offer talented people like Ms. Hawk. No, not those kind opportunities. Lita offers Janis the opportunity to “multi-task.” Don’t do it, Janis! I know the woman’s assets are having a damaging effect on your judgment, but remember — world safety! Unfortunately, the woman’s sex appeal proves to be too much for Janis, and she relents.

In Afghanistan, Aaron tries to blend in but draws attention of insurgents and gets himself caught in their warfare. I guess he’s not so good at blending in in Kandahar. Luckily, this works in Aaron’s favor, as the doctor who knows Tracy miraculously saves him from showers of gunfire.

Janis delivers the blueprints to handler Carline, the owner of a pet emporium, who tells her to destroy all other copies of the blueprints, which are currently with Mark at the Bureau and in Professor Corey’s office.

When Janis asks why, she snaps, “I don’t recall answering questions being part of the arrangement.” Dayum. So Janis goes super-secret agent, breaks into the Prof’s building to successfully procure the prints, and has this badass device to surge all the electricity in the building. I know we’re not supposed to be cheering for evil, but gosh, Janis makes being bad look really good. She’s on a roll and heads to the Bureau to retrieve the final prints from Mark’s board, but he catches her and demands answers. She makes up some excuse about Corey losing his copy, which gets her away, albeit empty-handed. That was a close call.

The next morning, Janis gets an ultrasound from a doctor who admonishes her for not getting 8-9 hours of sleep and taking better care of herself, which could cause her to lose the baby. Kinda hard when you’re leading a double-life in the FBI, don’t you think?

We step back on to Memory Lane Janis to the day of the blackout, when Janis wants out of the covert operation because millions of people died and she played a part in it without knowing what she was getting herself into. However, Janis is in way too deep in this operation, so there’s no way in hell they’d let her out. How come Janis never complained when she was pocketing all that money, Carline demands? Touché.

Olivia and Vreede travel to the Raven River Psych Hospital, where lurking Gabriel reveals that Dyson Frost used to conduct experiments on Gabriel and other psych patients who were “special” and make them write down what they saw in the flashforwards he caused in them. After the experiments were over, he ordered them all killed so as to keep his filthy exploitation under wraps.

Finally, a positive flashback: Two years before the blackout, Janis meets with Agent Vogel, who cites her gender, financial status, and sexual orientation, in addition to her impeccable skill, as grounds for the bad guys’ attempts to vet her to be a mole. Due to this vulnerability and Janis being referred to as one of the best in her class, Vogel recruits her to be an insider for the CIA and the FBI, while working for the bad guys. He warns her that things will not be easy as she’ll have to do things that will compromise her values but will win the trust of the bad guys and help the nation.

Janis pays her usual visit to Carline at the pet emporium, who tells her that she needs to secure the ring — the Quantum Entanglement Device — that Mark found. Oh wait, just kidding — there’s one more teensy little thing: Kill Mark while you’re at it.

Just when I was about to celebrate Janis being at once kick-ass and a good guy, Carline the pet lady drops this bomb on us. Nevertheless, the Janis-centric episode was awesome and hopefully we’ll keep seeing a lot more of her! What do you think of the good news of Janis being a double-agent?